Brilliant, but plain scientist Becca Evans has always done everything she could to make her beautiful sister, Grace, happy. So, when Grace started entering beauty contests, Becca did everything she could to make sure her sister won.

Now, she’s looking at another pageant—at a resort in the Caribbean. The prize? A date with America’s most eligible bachelor, Calum Price. For Grace, it would be the ultimate coup—landing a billionaire. Unfortunately, Calum seems to like Becca better...

Still, she’s determined to help her sister win. Calum doesn’t have to know that she’s the brains behind the beauty, the voice behind the veil, the finger behind the sexting...

But when things go too far, Becca must decide where her loyalty lies—with her sister...or the man she’s falling in love with.

Let the games begin.

The quiet, unnoticed geek amongst a bevy of gorgeous women catching the eye of the hot billionaire sounds like a story I can dig, especially since it feels like it might have some shadow of the Cyrano de Begerac effect here.

However, I didn’t quite expect ‘Bachelor Games’ to become a ‘forced’ love triangle type story of the female protagonist’s own making, as her altruistic but misplaced idea of family loyalty resolutely determines that her sister should get the good things (as well as the hot guy) because she happens to be the more good-looking one. It is exactly what Becca Evans does, which pretty much tanked the story for me.

To begin with, I didn’t find Calum’s and Becca’s first meeting realistic at all, let alone that banter and teasing one might carry out with a stranger on a plane, but this may be my awkward, distant and sceptical self speaking here. But that someone with poise and beauty like Grace would need Becca’s coaching seemed ludicrous and the artlessness of her behaviour during the pageant as a result of that came across as stilted and naive instead of endearing.

To add to that, Becca’s rather stilted ‘I like you but you’re better for my sister because no one really looks at me’ type of reasoning got me annoyed instead of sympathetic—aren’t we past this self-esteem business already? I wished she would simply own her attraction to Calum, rather than remain indecisive about them while seemingly being unable to help herself but end up in bed with him and then lie to her sister about it. Grace, on the other hand, had made no explicit mention of her desire for Calum, so Becca’s unfounded guilt felt like a mountain made of a molehill that sorely tested my patience and made me give up halfway.

Sadly, ‘Bachelor Games’ isn’t a story that clicked for me, especially with a heroine that rubbed me the wrong way every time. But as I’ve said numerous times before, personal tastes are just that—personal. This probably has a premise that would appeal to those who root for the underdog no matter what the circumstances are, so give it a whirl because Becca’s character could be read in a multitude of ways that I simply couldn’t, as other reviewers have already pointed out.

Former Navy SEAL Josh Steele gets tasked with a babysitting mission—watch over his boss’s daughter—a job he can only describe as hell. But when his assignment takes him to a tropical island, and he begins to see another side of Holly Fairfax, attraction sizzles between them—but he knows better than to risk his job for it.

Holly can’t believe that underneath those baggy clothes tech-guru Josh Steele is all ripped abs and sexy hotness. Ignoring said hotness is tough, especially since she has to work with him on the team-building exercises her boss has assigned if she wants a coveted promotion. It’s even harder when she discovers being around Josh brings out her naughty side – one she didn’t know she had.

But if she cracks the code on his cover, everything they’ve built could come crashing down.

‘Bonding Games’ started out great as a former SEAL goes undercover as a geek in a company in order to suss out an apparent threat to a woman who is trying her hardest to live a life away from her controlling father. But to Holly Fairfax, Josh Steele is merely a co-worker, or rather, a laid-back gamer-type until an elaborate company bonding session puts them in close proximity as partners.

The journey from there onwards however, is fairly predictable, which somehow didn’t quite live up to the potential of the promising blurb. Holly and Josh go from zero to a hundred in a matter of pages, and the overwhelming lust comes with every innocent touch and every fanciful imagining of what lies beneath each other’s clothes, despite the individual reminders to themselves that they want nothing more than a fling. They hit the bed early on as they go on every team-bonding activity and as expected, Holly hits the roof when Josh’s actual purpose for being in the company is inadvertently revealed.

Frankly, I’m still trying to figure out why it fell flat for me after the fun setup of their relationship. I’ve always loved the undercover business part, particularly when it involves some kind of double-crossing, though that always risks some TSTL behaviour when the deception is taken too far or when someone tends to overreact and forget their actual age. Maybe it’s because Holly/Josh’s story treads the same ground as so many others have gone before—not that I don’t enjoy authors’ different takes on them—, or maybe it’s all wrapped up too neatly after the hysterical blow up and the customary grovel, or that Holly/Josh didn’t feel too multifaceted in their portrayals despite their own prejudices. But overall this wasn’t too memorable and that ironically, defined this read for me.